Text 2201, 52 rader
Skriven 2011-08-12 14:02:51 av Jonathan de Boyne Pollard
Ärende: Re: OS2APIC.PSD
=======================
Thunderbird/5.0
comp.os.os2.apps,comp.os.os2.setup.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.os.os2.misc

UTC)
comp.os.os2.setup.misc:593 comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips:1329
comp.os.os2.misc:3570
From: Jonathan de Boyne Pollard <J.deBoynePollard-newsgroups@NTLWorld.COM>

> I've been trying to understand the options for the OS2APIC.PSD driver...

Don't go reading the copies of its documentation that exist on the WWW, 
such as at the EDM/2 CONFIG.SYS Documentation Project for example.  They 
all seem to have a single source, that was mis-transcribed from the 
original documentation.  Where the WWW documents say

 > The argument is "int" or "lint".

the original document actually said

 > The argument is "int<n>" or "lint<n>".

which of course makes more sense when one reads what follows.

For a better description of OS2APIC.PSD's command-line arguments, see 
IBM Technical Document #10322931.  It has the advantage of being more up 
to date than OS/2 version 2.11, as well. (-:

> For a typical single user, multi core system, what are the possible
> 'combinations' of these options to use/try?

The main use of the /NMI, /PREC, and /PIC options is to compensate for 
faulty MPS tables.  You've already seen that your firmware's SETUP 
utility has the wrong help text attached to the "IOAPIC function" 
option.  This is not the only way that a mainboard manufacturer can 
stuff up building a firmware image.  A manufacturer can stuff up the MPS 
tables, too.

It was common enough in years gone by that operating system vendors had 
to implement workarounds like this.  DOS+Windows 9x users wouldn't 
notice that MPS tables were wrong.  Not even most OS/2 users would. 
Only a few people with Windows NT and other SMP operating systems would. 
  Now that operating systems that actually care about such things are 
pretty much in the majority, the situation is somewhat different 
(although the operating systems that care also tend to prefer ACPI 
information to MPS).

Of course, if your MPS tables are *not* faulty, and correctly describe 
how your system is wired up, you won't need to fiddle with these options 
at all.

--- Internet Rex 2.31
 * Origin: virginmedia.com (1:261/20.999)